Posted
by
Zonk
on Thursday August 03, 2006 @09:13AM
from the emergence-day dept.

Kotaku is reporting that Epic has confirmed a November 12th retail date for Gears of War, the highly anticipated shooter for the Xbox 360. This announcement confirms a date found by individuals participating in a viral marketing campaign via Xbox Live. From the announcement: "'Our vision is to deliver a one-two punch of cinematic action paired with a thrilling and compelling interactive experience,' said Cliff Bleszinski, lead designer at Epic. 'With Gears of War we've created a title that will place gamers directly in the shadows of a ravaged world, surrounded by the beautiful remnants of a destroyed city and the horrific dangers that hide in the rubble.'"

Seriously, why is it every time we get a console FPS - which routinely outsell the best PC FPS games, some wanker gets on about how he dislikes the game without a keyboard and a mouse on his PC where the graphics card costs more than an entire 360.

Why is it console players think their consoles are more powerful than computers? My desktop which I built 3 and a half years ago for just under $1,000 has much better graphical and processing power than the 360 (I spent $135 on a new graphics card last winter). Why do I like gaming on a desktop? Well, aside from the better graphics/physics allowed; one reason is loading time! Consoles go "oh oh optical disk reading yeah oh so good yeah uh uhhhh"... my computer goes "Go 10,000 rpm raptors, read that data

Wow -- if ignorance is bliss, you must be quite happy. If you would have read my post, you would have seen that I actually enjoy consoles.

Fact: A PC is much more powerful than a console. Fact: Something doesn't have to have ultimate processing power to be fun (case-in-point, I am looking forward to the Wii coming out... even the the PS3 is "ohmygodsopowerful").

Yet again, irrelevant to the topic at hand. ALSO, my 360 is the most powerful AND least expensive "PC" in the house. For those college students (and recently graduated collegiates, ie: yours truely) that don't want to spend thousands on a machine that they're going to play games on anyway, consoles are the best route.
The problem with computers is that there's no standardization outside the basics. A 360 is a 360, cut print that's a wrap. A "PC" is anything with an internal harddrive, processor and basic in

A 750 mhz PIII? Please, I got an 850 mhz PIII machine for FREE (craigslist). How much did you pay for your Xbox? Try comparably priced machines and the results get much better (plus on a PC you have internet / media capabilities [not forced to buy Xbox remote to watch DVDs] / etc). Am I ripping on consoles? No, I love consoles -- I can't wait for the Wii to come out and I thought about the 360 (if I wasn't a poor college student). Spend thousands on a machine they're going to play games on? Please, t

Game controllers are great for action/arcade style games... but for FPS and RTS games, extreme precision is needed -- the kind of precision that is impossible with a gamepad. Auto-aim is a ridiculous concept that exists because console controls are so sub-par at controlling First Person Shooters.

What does precision aiming have to do with a game being fun? I've played a lot of FPS games on both PC and console, and the most fun I have had has been playing Halo 2 on Xbox Live or over System Link. Sure the ai

My post was angrily toned towards MBraynard's accusation that the 360 is better than a PC. I don't hate FPS games on consoles, I will reference my two favorite console games of all time: Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. Both great games; innovative, fun multiplayer, interesting weapons (I love the Farsight in PD), and overall full of wholesome goodness....but not all console FPS games are like that -- "tactical" FPS games like Counterstrike on Xbox feel cumbersome and like a bastard-child of the PC version.

"Better" is in the eye of the beholder. Some would argue that the Xbox/360 are "better" simply because there is nothing that compares to Live on the PC. Others couldn't care less about Live, or online play at all.

Personally, I have BOTH a 360 and a kick-ass gaming PC. I play them for different reasons.

IMHO, where the console is REALLY lacking (and missing a great opportunity) is with MMORPG's. The talk feature built into Live would make guild battles and raids AWESOME (without the hassle of using a 3rd part

I play GRAW on my 360 at 1280x1024 all the time. And it looks damn good.

I move my 360 from an HDTV to 19" LCD- depending on how desperately my wife wants to watch TV. I have the two video cables so it is fairly easy to move- but now I *really* want an extra power supply. That would make it real easy.

And I can tell you, the mouse and keyboard are a far more accurate way to move, point and shoot, than any console controller.I say this after kicking tail in Halo, Halo 2, Perfect Dark: Zero, Area 51 and Doom 3 (all deathmatch) PLUS countless single player games. I've also played Oblivion, Kameo: Elements of Power, Fable, Beyond Good & Evil, Prince of Persia (all 3 new versions), and other 3rd player games, and once again, with Oblivion, PoP, Fable, and BG&E, the mouse/keyboard points me to my targe

I did not realize Halo possibly had a negative game buying influence in that regard. Very odd...

I figure they also have to be shooting for Halo 3 to come out around the same time as well. I still think they'll use Halo 3 as a lever to try and get people to buy the HD-DVD perephial, perhaps with an extra disc of HD-DVD content related to Halo.

I can't see an over-the-shoulder TPS game being the "Halo" game to stop people from buying a PS3. From the E3 video footage, the game seems to be an impressive, although unimaginitive duck & shoot game.
kill.switch with a face lift and team play?

I playtested this game several times and while Im excited to see a full demonstration of the new unreal engine, I will say that GoW itself isnt anything spectacular. Basically it is a checkpoint grind ala halo, but with less story. You start out in some kind of prison whose population have gone amok and you have to fight your way to the evac point. Your enemies are interesting looking, but each one looks the same. Once again, it looks spectacular but if youve every played Unreal, Quake or Halo, the title will bore you quickly. The nonstop firefights can be broken up by your (necessary) use of scenery as cover but it rapidly becomes utilitarian and loses its wow factor. I encourage people to get the game and have a look but if story and drama are your thing, dont expect to be swept off your feet.

Tycho, of Penny-Arcade, wrote about Gears of War after he played it at E3. He came away quite impressed, and usually he's fairly spot on. The following quote was taken from this page. [penny-arcade.com] (Note: Mark Rein of Epic was quoted in a recent interview as saying all the E3 stuff, what Tycho experienced, was running on a single-threaded renderer, but the final version of the game is running on their multi-threaded, Gemini, renderer which makes things a lot smoother+prettier.)

Typically, the spectacle of the Electronic Entertainment Expo is such that each sequential event compresses the one before it, leaving me with three compacted days that begin inflating on the plane ride back and leave me a drooling wretch by Monday. This time is different; I have complete access to the entire week just as though I were lazily thumbing through a file drawer. For example, I knew the moment that I gripped the controller for Gears of War that I was in front of the game of the show. Nothing obscures that information. Gears is really at a "Halo" level of platform definition, and when your hands close around the gamepad on "emergence day," please remember I said so.

When we came out of the room where we had been playing it, a kind of illicit zone like an Opium Den, Kiko and I immediately began to discuss how profound the experience was. At the same time, Mike and Gabe (two separate people!) felt like it was pretty good, but bemoaned its rough framerate and constant tearing. It is our theory that perhaps some boxes were set to 1080i and some to 720p possibly creating performance disparities, because Keek and myself experienced no framerate abberations worth discussing. We did briefly experience a vision of a future where we spend every night playing Gears of War online, but I'm not sure that's connected to the vertical resolution.

If I had to say what defines it, I would say that "everything in the game world feels unrelentingly massive." This is a simulated environment that feels very confident, in that it is about huge armored men hiding behind sturdy cover while bursts of machinegun fire savage your solid fortifications. Everything you do is made to "feel" large, and when you throw yourself against a hunk of ruined automobile you are not left to wonder whether or not you are a bad ass. It is clear from the word "go." A kind of brutal platformer, Gears of War is about leaping from safety to safety, and everything reinforces it. It feels classic instantly. Indeed, you could call it Frogger Plus Firearms and not get it wrong.

The Wii launch likely won't be much more than a week before the 12th, if not the 12th. Not to mention Guitar Hero 2 ships in November, and FFXII ships Oct. 31. Shopping's going to be a real b*tch this holiday season.